Installers find alarms-over-IP ‘not so challenging’

More than forty security installers attended a workshop on IP-alarm transmission, staged by Chiron Security Communications and Norbian Benelux, and discovered how simple and reliable the technology has now become.

Sikh police seek bulletproof turbans

Sikh police officers want special bulletproof turbans to be developed so they can serve in firearms units, according to the new British Police Sikh Association.

The Sikh religion requires its male followers to wear the turban, but existing police safety helmets do not fit on top of them.

Insp Gian Singh Chahal, vice-chairman of the British Police Sikh Association, said the Home Office needed to make provision for Sikhs and recognise that they had a role to play.

He told Police Review: “Sikh officers have been prohibited from becoming firearms officers because our religion does not allow us to remove the turban.

“There has been some research done into producing a ballistic material [for turbans]. We would like to follow any opportunity where we could manufacture a ballistic product, made out of a synthetic fibre, that would ensure a certain degree of protection, so Sikh police officers could take part in these roles.

“I think there needs to be a recognition from the Home Office that would allow Sikh officers to carry out these roles. I think the will is there from chief constables but perhaps not yet from the Home Office.”

The association was launched last month to represent an estimated 2,000 Sikhs who serve in the police.

Sikhs do not have to wear crash helmets under the Motorcycle Crash Helmets (Religious Exemption) Act 1976.

Train driver, astronaut or pirate?

When the Mole was going through the childhood stage of wanting to be a train driver one week and astronaut the next, a career on the ocean waves as a pirate was always high on the list. Well, opportunities in the sector have never been so good. As this column is being typed, US Navy snipers have just shot dead three Somali pirates who were holding the captain of a 17,000-ton American cargo ship hostage aboard a lifeboat.

Our reporters have followed the extraordinary spate of piracy incidents off the Horn of Africa in recent months and marvelled that no concerted effort has been made to tackle the problem on the ground.

The envy of anybody except pawnbrokers

In April, UK-based analysts IMS Research revised their forecasts made during late 2008 in which they predicted a 34% growth in the worldwide network video surveillance market. This has now been reduced to 29%, a figure that would still be the envy of just about any other sector in the current climate except perhaps pawnbrokers. The research is supported by ISBG’s own straw polls conducted with integrators.

The Mole’s sources within the installer community report that for every tender that is being shelved or mothballed in the retail and banking markets, a comparable contract is being won on transport, communication and power distribution projects as the government’s Keynesian strategists seek to take up slack from domestic construction and invest in infrastructure.

Retail shrinkage set to rocket

If our own industry proves resilient in times of recession it may do so against a background of hardship in the world economies at large. The Mole predicts that the niche areas of retail surveillance and item tagging will go through the roof during the rest of 2009 and beyond.

The research, which covers 36 countries in the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia, suggests that shoplifting across the region cost retailers $104,529 m. In the US, Canada and Australia, employee theft is now thought to be hurting firms more than shoplifting, a development that has led to the installation of covert camera/DVR combos in stock rooms and distribution centres, even by companies with a historical reluctance to face up to the fact that their own staff are stealing from them.

“Violates a basic human right”

The Japanese are no more happy about the same ‘service’ being introduced, and just to prove we are truly international here at ISBG Towers, this is Yasuhiko Tajima, a professor of constitutional law in Tokyo, on the subject: “We strongly suspect that what Google has been doing violates a basic human right.” In the US, a Pittsburgh couple filed a suit after images of their home (which is located on a private access road) appeared online while the Internet giant had to act promptly when the Pentagon complained that security of military bases was being compromised.

There is usually a Next Big Thing at any industry trade show and last year it was undoubtedly video analytics. Those who came to mock, arguing that the technology had been oversold, have been proved wrong. Intelligent scene analysis is by no means the Emperor’s New Clothes and ISBG has been reporting on successful applications of analytics in recent editions.